A blog to promote our local policies, updates with the latest campaigns and news within the branch

Saturday, 17 January 2009

Fuel Poverty

An interesting piece in the T&A regarding fuel poverty, and upcoming legislation.

Instead of creating more complicated rules and regulations (and thereby making the whole process more expensive), I think the following proposals would be good to debate.

Scrap VAT on energyRaise the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000Freeze Council Tax rises

The energy companies are making millions out of us, at a time when it's becoming harder and harder to pay the bill. We need more than a one off payment, we need lasting lower prices and help paying the bill. (Labour want a one off windfall tax payment by the energy companies)

We need to help out the lower earners with a higher personal allowance.We should at least freeze Council Tax as it is this that really hits the elderly hard.Scrap VAT on energy thereby lowering prices for everybody.

There was talk of Labour looking into raising the personal allowance to £10,000 which is good news. But I seriously doubt the Bradford Tory Council will resisit putting up Council Tax again this year. As for scrapping the VAT, we couldn't do that because we are in the EU. (Well UKIP could but none of the other parties can!)